Clear Writing: Get Highest Marks for Your Essays

Perhaps you’ve already noticed it — clear writing is a specific skill. Punctuation is used wrong everywhere: in stores near you, in advertisements, etc. Sometimes punctuation marks are used so incorrectly that it’s hard to understand the real meaning of sentences. In a perfect world, academic writing would differ from notes on a door of a bar, but in fact, academic papers are where we read a few sentences instead of one, concise phrase.

For all these reasons, we decided to help those who want to write good and understandable content. We think that it’s time to get rid of unnecessary complexity and get back to basics.

Your readers shouldn’t overcome cumbersome combinations of long words, trying to get to the meaning that could be described in a few simple and clear sentences. The only thing you need is to wrap your arguments in a proper form that will be perceived by your audience easily.

The Plain English campaign is aimed to prove that documents of any kind, doesn’t matter from which field — law, science, healthcare, business — can be accessible by everyone who reads them. We are going to share some secrets of clear writing with you. Simply put, we will show you how to use a proper structure of sentences and a proper vocabulary.

Is It Really Important?

Perhaps you think that the meaning of your content is much more important than its form and structure, but if so, you’re wrong. When writing a paper, you not only give some new information to your audience but also demonstrate your ability to work with language and express your thoughts clearly. If your readers can’t understand you clearly, you will lose them fast.

If you want to write well, you need to read a lot. Reading and writing can’t exist without each other. We suggest focusing on newspapers, nursing journals, and magazines. However, you shouldn’t just read these sources like you are used to. You need to focus on structure and notice how arguments evolve. Think what sentences are easy to understand, and what are hard to read. Use your observations in your work.

Keep It Short

If you want your content to be clear, informative, and easy to read, you have to learn to write concisely. It applies to words as wells to paragraphs. Think of the meaning of your text, and if you can easily shorten it without losing the meaning, do it. If you want to say two different things in one sentence, break it up and write two short sentences.

Words are your building blocks. If you’re writing about medicine and healthcare, you likely will need to use many difficult words, and some of them are of Latin origin. Thus, you must create enough comfortable space between these words so that your readers at least won’t be overwhelmed by the difficulty of your structure. Make sure all words are short and simple. Imagine that your words have their weight, and your readers need to pick them up and carry them through your sentences, picking up a new heavy load with every step. The aim of your piece of writing is to make sure your readers will walk all the way to the end. To minimize their burden, use short words, for example, you can replace “per annum” with “a year,” “purchase” — with “buy,” etc. You don’t need to use long words if they don’t add any important meaning.

The same principle applies to sentences as well. There’s one thing you need. Be concise. Write briefly. Even two words make sense. We all have been taught at school that every sentence must have its verb. It’s true, but not always. If you want to emphasize your point, short sentences will help you a lot. However, you can’t write the whole text using two-word sentences only. Thus, set a goal not to exceed 15 words. Of course, we don’t mean that you must count your words while writing. You will see what sentences are too long — they always stand out and make reading more difficult. With time, you’ll develop a natural ability to use sentences of the right length.

We also suggest making sure that you devote every paragraph to one idea. It will be perfect if your paragraphs are three sentences long, however, you may make them shorter or longer — just don’t make them too heavy. If you want to tell something else, unrelated to the previous point, start a new paragraph. Every paragraph must have a proper structure: an introduction of its idea, an explanation, and a kind of a conclusion, that will lead your readers to the next paragraph.

Always read what you’ve written and think how you can cut your content down. Think of shorter synonyms and try to rephrase your sentences briefly. In most cases, you’ll find out that you can do it, and your text will become much better than before.

Avoid Repetition

The first thing you can do with your sentences and paragraphs to make them shorter is not to repeat yourself. If you fall into repetition sometimes, you’re not alone — all writers do it. The point is to avoid repetition when it’s unnecessary. If you’ve already expressed your thought clearly, you don’t need to repeat it once again. If you want to mention something you told about before, do it briefly, without repeating the whole statement or question.

Look at this example:

“This survey shows that mealtimes of patients are better in terms of nutrition and hydration when nurses are involved. Nurses make sure patients are not distracted during their mealtime. Nurses also motivate patients to make the mealtime an important part of their everyday life. Therefore, nurses increase the nutrition and hydration of their patients.”

As you can see, the last sentence doesn’t add any new information and repeats the first sentence. It’s unnecessary here so it can be removed without losing the meaning of the content.

Active Verbs

What is a difference between strong and weak writing? Strong writing is all about active verbs, not passive ones.

Usually, sentences consist of three main elements: a subject that takes certain actions, a verb that represents the action itself, and an object. The object is what this action is done to. Active verbs are used with subjects that actually do something, not being just a part of somebody else’s actions. Passive verbs are the exact opposite — they are used with objects and so don’t mean any active actions.

For example: “The nurse changed the patient’s dressing.” Here we see that the nurse is doing something — they change the patient’s dressing. The patient is an object in this sentence. On the other hand, we can say: “The patient’s dressing was changed by the nurse.” This is a passive verb.

• “The nurse watched how the matron gives the patient a shot” — active.
• “The matron giving the patient a shot was observed by the nurse” — passive.
• “The nurse asked the patient how he feels” — active.
• “The patient was asked by the nurse” — passive.

We suggest using the active voice because it makes your writing stronger and more concrete. Moreover, using the active voice will make your text shorter, which is a great thing.

Nominalizations

What nominalizations are? These are nouns made out of verbs, and you must avoid them because they make your sentences harder to read. These are a few examples of nominalizations: “failure,” “arrangement,” “completion,” and “discussion.” All these nouns can be replaced with verbs: “fail,” “arrange,” “complete,” and “discuss.” We suggest writing “We failed to complete our task because…” instead of “The failure of the completion of our task was caused by…” Just look at these two sentences and you will see that the first one sounds clear and simple, unlike the second one. Another thing that makes the first sentence better is the active voice.

Punctuation

Clear punctuation is a sufficient part of good writing.

You should use commas or dashes to separate dependent clauses — like this. Here is another example:

Writing reports is a hard — but important — task.

Here is how this sentence would look with parentheses (brackets) instead of dashes:

Writing reports is a hard (but important) task.

Obviously, you can also use a pair of commas. The phrase separated by commas or dashes can also be removed from this sentence without losing the general meaning. The most important thing about separating such phrases is to do it from both sides. For instance, when using parentheses, you can’t use only one bracket at the beginning. The same applies to dashes and commas as well.

The example above illustrates the use of commas in order to include additional information. However, we also use commas to give our readers a little break. Commas create pauses, and here is an example of such a use:

“When I did my rounds at 6 AM, I’ve noticed that the patient’s glucose level was too high.”

Everything that follows the comma isn’t an additional information. On contrary, this is the most important part of this sentence. Thus, we don’t need to separate this phrase from both sides. The only purpose of this comma is to give readers a breath before a new batch of information.

Full stops (periods). They are good. You need them. They help you write short sentences. So we suggest using them. Frequently.

Apostrophes are more tricky than full stops or even commas. Most people use them incorrectly, even though apostrophes are quite common in writing of any kind. Some people just forget about them, others overuse them. To use apostrophes correctly, you just need to know some basic rules.

Most often, apostrophes indicate possession. When somebody owns an object, we add an apostrophe followed by an “s”:

• The woman’s book
• The nurse’s jacket
• Billy’s parents
• The hospital’s patients
• The President’s speech

If a noun that indicates the owner of the object is plural, the only difference is that we put the apostrophe after the “s”:

• The nurses’ union
• The patients’ bathroom
• The doctors’ uniforms

Keep in mind the important difference between these two cases. “The doctors’ uniforms” means that there are many doctors and many uniforms, while “the doctor’s uniforms” means that one doctor has several uniforms. Therefore, sometimes it’s enough to just use an apostrophe incorrectly to change the meaning of the whole sentence.

Sometimes we use plural nouns that don’t end with the “s.” for example “women,” “phenomena,” “people,” or “children.” In this case, we don’t need to add an extra “s” at the end of the word. Instead, we use the apostrophe as if it was a singular noun: “women’s rights,” “children’s bedroom.” In this case, there are no alternative ways to interpret these words, so we don’t face the dilemma of “doctors’ uniforms” and “doctor’s uniforms.”

Talking about confusions, we must mention another pair of words that change their meaning depending on the apostrophe. These are “it’s” and “its.” Even though we see the apostrophe with the “s” at the end, it serves the different function. It doesn’t indicate possession but shows us that there is a missing letter. “It’s” is just a short form of “it is.” In contrast, when talking about some object that belongs to “it,” we need to write “its.”

It’s raining outside.

This job has its benefits.

Please remember this rule and never use an apostrophe with “it” to indicate possession:

• Its — an object belongs to it.
• It’s — the shortened form of “it is.”

We also recommend that you read a book Eats, Shoots & Leaves, written by Lynn Truss. It’s not only useful but also very funny.